Videos

Do law and film ever treat time in the same way? The answer led me back to a set of books from the seventeenth century.

Why is a basic method of Austrian constitutional law named after one of the central features of the Austrian landscape? Part of my film-in-progress about Austrian conceptions of law and landscape.

Sustainability is the key principle. Rare books, forests, and domestic architecture in Austria:

Water, water, everywhere, and every drop to drink. A glimpse into a film-in-progress about Austrian conceptions of law and landscape:

Salt. No, not as in Angelina Jolie. Like Salzburg and the legal regime of the Archbishops. Part of my film-in-progress about Austria.

Music, mountains, law. Part of my film-in-progress about Austria.

If historians thought about legal biography in terms of plot rather than chronology.

Mike Widener and I solve a problem for our exhibition “Law’s Picture Books,” to open at the Grolier Club in New York in September 2017. Winner of the 2015 best video award in the “Day in the Life” competition of the American Association of Law Libraries.

An eighteenth-century Italian treatise on alluvium inspires thoughts about water, law, rare books, and the passage of time.

A literary ramble through New York City, following the path of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick. Part two in a series.

Philadelphia’s Chinatown, a lonely academic library, a Massachusetts cemetery, and a party with a bunch of kids. How can video help bring a 1909 edition of Ragged Dick back into some of its original spatial and temporal relationships? Part three in a series.

How can video bring Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick back into some of its original spatial and temporal relationships? The first in a series.

On the world’s first coinage—and why it matters.

When books were bound in wood.

On a small, beautiful law book.

On a law of honor and contract—Bedouin law.

If you are in Germany, you can access a slightly different version of this video here.

On the constitutional concept of human dignity—and the parallels between German law and music.

On an ancient institution, the cattle pound.

When I was in Europe in November 2013, I asked a group of legal professionals some unusual questions. The results are here.

I’ve been asking people involved with law around the world some unusual but revealing questions—especially how they would compare their legal system to songs, paintings, and machines. Here is one response.

On populism and positive rights in Argentina.

OK, it has nothing to do with law, but now and then we could all use a little break: